Pinoys + YouTube = Fame

There's a lot to rejoice about our latest YouTube Pinoy stars -- Charice Pempengco (a 15 year-old singer who got a standing ovation in Ellen Degeneres's show) and Arnel Pineda (the new lead singer of Journey). They follow the footsteps of Alyssa Alano, but have gone way beyond Alano's league. Pempengco and Pineda ride on the same wave that catapulted the Thriller-dancing prisoners of CPDRC (Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center) to global fame.

There are several interesting points to draw out of this recent surge of fame through YouTube. I'll discuss these later, after I give you a brief background of both stories.

Ellen Degeneres saw a clip on YouTube showing Charice performing in a singing contest. Ellen was so impressed by the young singer that she showed the clip on air and announced that she wanted Charice flown in.

Pempengco flew to LA and performed for Ellen's show last December to a standing ovation (Ellen cried after the performance). In an interview by Philippine media, Pempengco later said that Ellen told her, "Now you're a star." Composer and music artist David Foster next brought Charice to Las Vegas to watch Celine Dion. Foster kept introducing Pempengco to friends as his new protege.

Like Charice, Arnel Pineda was also discovered on YouTube. Neal Schon (lead guitars for Journey) wanted to find a new vocalist for the band. So he browsed YouTube and watched in awe as Arnel belted a Journey song.

Pineda has the ability that we Filipinos call "plakado", meaning, if you listen to him singing, you wouldn't be able to distinguish him from Steve Perry, Journey's original vocalist. (Plakado, by the way, is derived from the word "plaka," referring to an outdated technology: vinyl records. "Plakado" literally means a song performance that sounds exactly like the original record.)

Schon was amazed at how Pineda's rendition was plakadong-plakado, so he didn't stop until he found Pineda. He invited him to audition in the US (at first, Pineda thought Schon's email messages were a hoax). There's even a side story involving how Pineda got his US visa for a song, literally, but that's another story.

And the rest is proverbial history.

Now these are the points to ponder:

1. Charice's YouTube video was a clip showing her singing in an ABS-CBN singing contest. If ABS-CBN asserted its copyright to the clip and asked YouTube to pull it down, Charice would never have been discovered.
2. Both Charice and Arnel were unknowns even to most Filipinos. Charice only won third place in the ABS-CBN singing contest and Arnel is the former lead singer of the Amo band (if you were a college student in the '80s, you'll remember this band). In fact, when the Amo band's star faded, Arnel had to go to Hong Kong to sing in bars.
3. Frankly speaking, Charice and Arnel would never have made it big in the Philippines. Why? Because the Pinoy culturati -- the gatekeepers of Philippine pop, in other words, the "in crowd" -- would say that the two performers are "bakya". This is why they never really rose to fame in our country. But YouTube and an army of fans changed that perception. Just like in the case of Alyssa Alano (reviewed here), YouTube provided the venue where user opinion trumped and overtruned the snobbish judgement of a few gatekeepers in media. Charice's video was uploaded by a fan. The link to this video circulated among fans, pushing its YouTube rating to nearly a million hits. This in turn caught the eye of Ellen Degeneris.
4. This word "bakya" really is an interesting insight into Filipino culture. The word, which means wooden shoes, later gained a new meaning, connoting the kitschy preferences of the unwashed masses. It was popularized by National Artist film director Bert Avellana, who used it to express his frustration over why Pinoys would prefer to watch "bakya" movies rather than "quality" movies (which, we realize now, means films that are patterned after Western cultural values). "Bakya" also later gained a cousin, "baduy", which was a more general term to refer to off-tangent, outmoded fashion style.
5. But again, the power of user opinion is changing this snobbery. Case in point, songs by Queen and the BeeGees for example, were considered bakya and baduy, since they were only sung by the kanto boys in drinking sessions at the corner sari-sari store. Or only enjoyed playtime in jukeboxes and baduy radio stations.
6. Yet American Idol used their songs as contest pieces. Filipinos, who happen to love American Idol, started trawling the web for these songs and downloading them so they could play both the original song and the version sung by their favorite Idol contestants. This surge in the power of users to influence pop media would never have happened without the web. It is the same disruptive power used when Erap was deposed (using a combination of texting, email and web blogging).
7. The reach of YouTube is quickly showing a lot of uses, even for traditional media like television. Many shows in the US now regularly feature YouTube clips. CNN even used YouTube to promote its Presidential Election coverage. They created the YouTube Debates, where viewers were asked to upload questions -- any sort of questions -- from which CNN would select a few to field to the presidential candidates.

   What other tightly held assumptions will YouTube and its parent, the world wide web, be disrupting in the future? That is the interesting question!

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   Links:

   Journey's history [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_%28band%29]

   Charice Pempengco on Ellen [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHdy-di5nNo]

   Arnel Pineda's story [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lip8_rLg5wo]

   The Thriller-dancing prisoners of Cebu [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMnk7lh9M3o]

   Bonus Track: Renaldo Lapuz - the flamboyant Pinoy entertains the Idol judges [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuH0v7GIIwI]